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Life at the Intersection.

The Right To Bear Arms vs Everything

What fascinates me about people who insist the Second Amendment gives them a right to bear military weapons at brunch is how often they ignore what arms meant. Or the bit about a well regulated militia. Or that a standing permanent military force was never intended to exist alongside that militia. The Second Amendment was written in the era of cannons, muskets & flintlock pistols. No one could have envisioned 300 round bursts, much less the 1200 to 1500 rounds a minute that early Tommy guns were capable of firing. I won’t even get into rocket launchers or grenades. Your right to bear arms was never intended for this level of weaponry.

Sensible gun control that recognizes the intent of the 2nd Amendment would limit the number & the capabilities of weapons in a home. The ship sailed on the US giving up guns decades ago. Okay I can accept that we won’t do as Australia did and surrender every weapon to a mass buyback. After all the US has 300 million guns, not the 3 million or so estimated to be in civilian hands in Australia. So, how about limiting the number per household & restricting the size of magazines nationwide?

That gives you the beginning of the well regulated part. We’re failing on that now. Okay great. Let’s talk about training and licensing and. Make buying a gun like getting a license to operate anything else that can be dangerous. 100 hours of classroom time. Regular evaluations. Require insurance & maintaining them like you would a car, boat, or plane. Start there. No one’s coming to take anyone’s guns without cause. Instead you have to prove you’re fit to have them in the first place. And that you’re fit to keep them. Make buying ammo harder than ordering it by the case online. We could mirror Australia’s gun laws easily enough and it wouldn’t infringe on the Second Amendment at all.

People keep pointing to violence in Chicago as though straw purchasers who can buy a trunk full of guns in Indiana, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Arkansas or Missouri and sell them on the streets here aren’t the source of that violence. Some 60% of guns used in crime here were bought legally in states with lax gun laws. The rest? Bought in rural Illinois. Or small town Illinois. Where gun stores are part of the mall. It’s not like Chicago gun laws matter in that environment. And despite the myths, areas with lax gun laws aren’t safer than Chicago or NY or LA. They’re just smaller.

If we’re talking about the Second & honoring it in word & intent? It’s time to federalize gun ownership regulations. No lax states allowed. We’d have a unified process for getting licensed, insured, and operating safely. We also wouldn’t pretend shootings are isolated incidents. The letter of the Second Amendment isn’t the problem here, it’s the fact that too many people want to use it so they can keep ignoring daily mass shootings

We know the red flags already for these incidents. History of domestic violence? No weapons for you for 5 years. Mandatory therapy & testing. Note, current law requires a conviction, but most cases of intimate partner violence don’t result in even misdemeanor convictions that would trigger the lifetime ban. For every “I would never give up my gun.” person spouting off? You’re part of the problem. You help normalize mass violence because you make it so easy for the tools to commit it to be accessed. Mass shooters are often wielding legally purchased firearms that they were able to stockpile along with ammo. It’s not their criminal history or lack thereof that predicts the future. Nor does the clean record theoretically required to own weapons in the US guarantee that someone won’t wake up one day and go out to attack their neighbors.

I don’t want the future where we treat mass shootings like a mold report on the news. “70% chance of death at the mall today, wear a vest”. Where we pretend that healthcare isn’t a right, but access to tools to murder kids is the price of freedom. None of us should want that future where we respond to these near daily incidents with “thoughts and prayers” instead of concrete effective action. And if you’re worried about the US military turning on the population…that would be a reason to change our military. Not buy 12 more guns. You should ask yourself why you are so fervently attached to laws that make it easier for mass shootings like Vegas or Orlando or Newtown to happen regularly. Ask why you value guns more than the lives of your kids or your friends or total strangers? Seriously, ask yourself that question. Because the answer should be “I don’t”

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3 comments

Maybe instead of asking some half-assed compromise solution every single time there is a tragedy, pretty please, Americans should start talking about repealing that dumb amendment of yours.
If you ask 10 you don’t get 10. You get (maybe) 1.
Start asking for 100.
Learn from the GOP.